Belfer Center Fellow Discusses Nigerian Election Violence at HKS Seminar

Belfer Center fellow Megan M. Turnbull, a comparative politics professor at the University of Georgia, discussed the conditions leading to election violence in Nigeria during a virtual seminar hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School on Thursday.

Turnbull, who is currently working on a book that further discusses political order and election violence, provided three "broad reasons" why election violence is important to scholars.

"It entails a good deal of human suffering," Turnbull said. "From a scholarly angle, I think this book project advances the election violence literature in important ways, and then there’s also some policy relevance."

During the seminar, Turnbull said she aimed to answer "the big overarching question in the book," which explores under what conditions "political elites and non-state groups jointly organize election violence" in Nigeria....